Archive for January, 2019

How to find out how many physical cores and logic cores your CPU has? Need to check the CPU core before you buy a new laptop? In this tutorial we’ll show you 4 simple ways to find number of physical cores and logical cores in your CPU on Windows 10.

Physical Core VS. Logical Core

A physical core is an actual physical processor core in your CPU. Each physical core has its own circuitry and its own L1 (and usually L2) cache can read and execute instructions separately (for the most part) from the other physical cores on the chip. A CPU with two physical cores is called a dual-core processor and four physical cores is called a quad-core processor.

A logical core (also known as logical processors) is more of a programming abstraction than an actual physical entity. Logical cores are the abilities of a single physical core to run multiple tasks or threads simultaneously. For example, if you have a quad core CPU and each of its physical cores can run two threads at a time, then you have 8 logical cores.

Method 1: Check Number of CPU Cores Using Task Manager

Press the Ctrl + Shift + Esc keys simultaneously to open the Task Manager. Go to the Performance tab and select CPU from the left column. You’ll see the number of physical cores and logical processors on the bottom-right side.

Method 2: Check Number of CPU Cores Using msinfo32 Command

Press the Windows key + R to open the Run command box, then type msinfo32 and hit Enter.

It should open up the System Information app. Select Summary and scroll down until you find Processor. The details will tell you both how many cores and logical processors your CPU has.

Method 3: Check Number of CPU Cores Using Command Prompt or PowerShell

Open the Command Prompt or PowerShell. Type the following command and press Enter:WMIC CPU Get DeviceID,NumberOfCores,NumberOfLogicalProcessors

The output of the command tells you how many cores and how many logical processors are found in each CPU on your computer.

Method 4: Check Number of CPU Cores Using Third-Party Software

If you would like to find out the detail information about your CPU, try the third-party freeware CPU-Z. After running the app, you can see the number of physical cores and threads (logical cores) at the bottom.

That’s it!

Comments Off on 4 Ways to Find Number of Cores in your CPU on Windows 10 »

How can I USB boot a VM in VMware Workstation 9? Since VMware’s BIOS doesn’t natively support booting from USB stick, you have to do it with the help of Plop Boot Manager. But Plop Boot Manager only works in legacy BIOS mode. In this tutorial we’ll show you another way to boot VMware Workstation / Fusion / ESXi virtual machine from USB stick, by mounting USB stick as virtual hard disk.

Enter the filename and location for the new virtual disk, and click Finish.

Now, your USB stick will appear as an IDE hard drive to the virtual machine. To turn on your machine, click on the VM menu and select Power -> Power On to Firmware.

If your virtual machine uses UEFI firmware, it will boot to the Boot Manager screen. From there you can simply select IDE drive to boot from your USB stick.

If your virtual machine uses BIOS, it will boot to the BIOS Setup Utility. Go to the Boot tab and select the Hard Drive and press Enter. Use the + key to move the virtual IDE drive to the top position.

Timeline is a new feature introduced since Windows 10 April 2018 Update, which will record all your PC activities so that you can resume them later, from where you left off. If you don’t use this feature, here is how to disable Timeline with group policy to stop Windows 10 from collecting your activity history.

How do I erase my stored user names and passwords in Firefox? Need to clear the old passwords from Firefox that you don’t use any longer? Here are 2 simple ways to remove all saved passwords in Firefox on Windows 10 / 8 / 7, so that you’ll be prompted for new password when you sign into any website.

Method 1: Remove Firefox Saved Passwords Using GUI

When Firefox is running, click on the Menu button (three horizontal lines) in the far right corner of the browser, and then select Options.

The Saved Logins dialog box displays each site for which you have saved your username and password. To delete all your passwords from the Password Manager, click Remove All.

Click Yes to confirm, all of your stored usernames and passwords will be deleted.

Method 2: Remove Firefox Saved Passwords Using Windows Explorer

If you’ve forgotten the Master password or your Firefox browser is crashed, just delete the password file (logins.json or signons.sqlite) in the Firefox profile location and your saved passwords will be gone.

When you start moving to Chrome as your primary web browser, the first thing to do is to move all your passwords and bookmarks from the old browser to the new one. Since Chrome 66, it makes password importing & exporting much easier for inexperienced users. In this tutorial we’ll walk you through the steps to import passwords into Chrome from Firefox in Windows 10.

How to Import Passwords into Chrome from Firefox in Windows 10

Open Chrome and click the three dots menu button appeared in the upper right corner, then select Bookmarks -> Import bookmarks and settings.

The following pop-up will appear. You can select Mozilla Firefox from the drop-down list and click on Import. Make sure the “Saved passwords” is checked.

How can I export the user names and passwords stored in Firefox Quantum? Firefox offers to store the passwords and then auto-fill the login forms whenever you access a specific website. It seems that the passwords are no longer needed, but anyway, the moment will come when you need to reinstall Windows or export the passwords to a new computer. In this tutorial we’ll show you a simple way to recover or export passwords from Firefox Quantum.

Starting from Firefox 57 Quantum, your passwords are stored in the key4.db and logins.json files and the old Firefox password exporter add-ons doesn’t work any longer. But you can still rescue your saved passwords with the third-party software – Firefox Password Recovery.

Part 1: Export Passwords from Your Current Firefox Installation

To get started, download and install the Firefox Password Recovery program on your local PC. After the program is launched, click on Start Recovery.

It displays a list of supported applications you can recover passwords from. Just select the “Recover Firefox Password” option.

The program will locate all profiles for your current Firefox installation and decrypt the stored passwords. If one of your Firefox profiles is secured with a master password, the following pop-up will appear and you have to enter the master password.

Just about a few seconds later, you’ll see all passwords saved in Firefox Quantum along with username and URL.

Now, you can export / save the list of passwords to a plain text file.

Part 2: Recover Passwords from Old Firefox Profile

How do I recover Firefox saved passwords from old hard drive? If you have a backup copy of your previous Firefox profile directory, it’s super easy to extract passwords from it. Follow these steps:

Open up the Firefox Password Recovery program and click on Recover From File.

You’ll see the following pop-up window. Click on Browse to locate your old Firefox profile folder and click OK. By default, the profile is in this location: C:\Users\{Windows_account_name}\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles.

All your Firefox saved passwords will be shown immediately. If your Firefox profile is protected using master password, you’ll be prompted to enter it first.

Comments Off on How to Recover or Export Passwords from Firefox Quantum »

How can I disable automatic updates in Firefox Quantum? It could be frustrating for Firefox to push the update notifications and interrupt what you’re reading.

Starting with Firefox version 63, Mozilla has removed the ability to disable updates completely. When you click on the Menu button at the top right corner and select Options.

Scroll down to the Firefox Updates section, you’re left with two options: Automatically install updates, Check for updates but let you choose to install them. The option “Never check for updates” is no longer available.

If you don’t like Firefox frequently installing the updates, here is a simple way to prevent Firefox Quantum from updating the version automatically in Windows 10 / 8 / 7.

After opening Firefox, click on the Menu button (the icon with three lines) in the upper right side of the address bar, and then select Help.

Select Troubleshooting Information.

When the Troubleshooting Information tab appears, click on the Open Folder button under the Application Basics section.

This will launch Windows Explorer and display your current Firefox profile directory.

Method 2: Find Your Profile Folder without Opening Firefox

Press the Windows key + R to open the Run command. Type the following and press Enter.%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox

After Windows Explorer opens to that directory, double-click on the profile.ini file to open it with Notepad or other text editor.

You can view the relative or absolute path for all your Firefox profiles. But there is only one default profile. In my example, the default profile is located under the directory: %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\einxo22v.default.

By default, Cortana is available on the lock screen in Windows 10, so you can chat with Cortana without first unlocking your computer. If you want to improve the security level, it’s better to turn off Cortana as needed. In this tutorial we’ll show you 3 ways to enable or disable Cortana on Windows 10 lock screen.